Quote Originally Posted by reillyd View Post
Now I'm even more confused. How could you 'license' Botcon for merchandising? Just slap there word botcon on shirts and hats to sell, what, dozens? I thought it was somewhat bizarre when I clicked on the store link (I was hoping for a cache of unsold past botcon toys) and saw the shirts. I assumed it was just a prelude to what might be coming, and not the entirety of their efforts
That's what I don't get either. I know that "BotCon" is an iconic concept or word, but only really among a small number of hardcore Transformers fans, so licensing it out for producing non-toy merchandise, seems a little weird. Even during BotCon's golden periods, around about 2000-2002 and 2007-2011, when it was more positive than negative, prompting most fans to consider it the one event they needed to attend at least once in their lives.... there wasn't really a demand for non-toy items with "BotCon" written on them. I went to all but one BotCon since 1999 and was always buying stuff at the convention for others back here in Australia, but very rarely did I get requests for non-toy BotCon items. And those non-toy items weren't being requested because they had BotCon on them, but because of what they were or what they had on them (like comics, stickers, shot glasses or hats that just had regular Transformers logos on them).